My plan is to find a way to make my longboards legal in Germany.
For that I studied which vehicles are already legal that are powered by an electric motor. And I came across the “Smart Ped” kick push scooter.
As a couple of you know you would need a license plate for electric vehicles which go faster than 6 km/h and accelerate on their own.
So the “Smart Ped” doesn’t accelerate. It only holds the speed like a cruise control. And also the motor has a max power output of 250 Watt and max speed of 25 km/h.
So I was thinking about the same behavior for my electric longboard. You would have to push on your own but it could hold the speed with 250 watt and stops giving power above 25 km/h.
So is started to look in the code of the Vesc and finally found a way to program this by changing the firmware.
I made the first test runs and still need to do some fine adjustments but it looks very promising, only the
max speed settings are not yet included.
So the behavior is as described:
No acceleration
When the trigger is pulled the board tries to keep the speed
Power of the motor is limited to 250 watts (limited by software, so any motor is fine)
When the board can’t keep the speed (up hill) then the board will only try to keep the actual speed:
e.g. before hill 20 km/h, on top of the hill 15 km/h because 250 watts was not enough so you would continue rolling with 15 km/h on the flat. To be faster you need to push again and pull the trigger again
when the trigger is not touched then it rolls freely
full brake power available (saferthan a non-powered board)
above 25 km/h the motor can’t be activated
Does anybody see a reason why this shouldn’t be legal then. Because “Smart Ped” kick push scooter does the same thing and it is allowed. But maybe I missed something.
a asked the mellow guys a few months ago if they can do exact this behavier but got no useful respond, keep going, I would try this aswell but have no idea how to change the VESC that way.
You can’t do it by settings in the BLDC tool. (Not yet )
You have to change the code in the firmware which isn’t so easy.
Maybe later on a new section can be implemented in the BLDC-TOOL (maybe app settings) to choose and adjust this behavior.
Lets explain it with an example:
If an eboard can go faster than 6km/h it needs insurance and so on. You are not allowed to drive with it even if you change the max speed on the software side. That is because you could go faster if you remove the software “lock”.
I think you have to use a 250W motor otherwise you could potentially use more wattage and thus it is not legal.
By my studies it is only important that the power on the shaft gives max 250 Watts in average (whatever average means here, so small pikes are allowed).
Also a motor can’t be regulated because then you could power it with a higher voltage battery and it would give again more power. And there is no law for the battery. So the regulation must be on the output power. Not the power the motor might can produce.
And you only need insurance when it accelerates to more than 6 km/h. But my modifications doesn’t allow that. It only keeps the speed, so it is only a assistance. E-bikes till 25 km/h and 250 watts are also only allowed because they assist you when you push the peddle instead of accelerating on their own. And they need no insurance.
The “Smart Ped” does the same, and it is legal.
you are wrong - an e-bike is basically limited to exactly this behavior.
Only thing that needs to also be implemented:
As far as I know the vehicle is not allowed to “hold” the speed but needs to slow down if there is no constant “push” by the user. That is why you have to keep peddaling on a bike and do these awkward pushes on the scooter.
The “Smart Ped” keeps the speed for 500 seconds and then needs another push. I think something like this can easily be implemented. But good that you mentioned.
In reality you would never notice because i think you won’t keep the same speed for 8 minutes constantly without a speed change. But do you know where i can find more details about that?
(1) Kraftfahrzeuge und ihre Anhänger, die auf öffentlichen Straßen in Betrieb gesetzt werden sollen, müssen von der zuständigen Behörde (Zulassungsbehörde) zum Verkehr zugelassen sein. Die Zulassung erfolgt auf Antrag des Verfügungsberechtigten des Fahrzeugs bei Vorliegen einer Betriebserlaubnis, Einzelgenehmigung oder EG-Typgenehmigung durch Zuteilung eines amtlichen Kennzeichens.
(2) Als Kraftfahrzeuge im Sinne dieses Gesetzes gelten Landfahrzeuge, die durch Maschinenkraft bewegt werden, ohne an Bahngleise gebunden zu sein.
(3) Keine Kraftfahrzeuge im Sinne dieses Gesetzes sind Landfahrzeuge, die durch Muskelkraft fortbewegt werden und mit einem elektromotorischen Hilfsantrieb mit einer Nenndauerleistung von höchstens 0,25 kW ausgestattet sind, dessen Unterstützung sich mit zunehmender Fahrzeuggeschwindigkeit progressiv verringert und
1.
beim Erreichen einer Geschwindigkeit von 25 km/h oder früher,
2.
wenn der Fahrer im Treten einhält,
unterbrochen wird. Satz 1 gilt auch dann, soweit die in Satz 1 bezeichneten Fahrzeuge zusätzlich über eine elektromotorische Anfahr- oder Schiebehilfe verfügen, die eine Beschleunigung des Fahrzeuges auf eine Geschwindigkeit von bis zu 6 km/h, auch ohne gleichzeitiges Treten des Fahrers, ermöglicht. Für Fahrzeuge im Sinne der Sätze 1 und 2 sind die Vorschriften über Fahrräder anzuwenden.
Oh and btw:
I am highly interested in this project. Please go forward with this and publish the firmware once you have a working version. This will make my life a lot easier (and calm down the lady at home). In theory you could even incorporate the remote to switch between the “legal” mode and the one for private properties
You are right.
“It has to stop powering when the driver stops pedeling”
But when it comes to the “Smart Ped” that only could mean to stop assisting the acceleration and not to shut off the power completely. I guess we would need a lawyer to make that point 100% clear.
I also tried to find more details about the “Smart Ped” and how they made it legal but most pages simply say because it doesn’t accelerate.
Just FYI, this project has already been attempted/compleated in some form by the respected butthole himself. @lowGuido
Not identical. But very similar.
He uses the cruise control of the nunchuck. Nice idea.
Sadly that doesn’t cover all the regulations.
For example he has not the limitation of 250 watts.
And if there is a hill that slows him down he would accelerate again on the flat to the previous speed.
He also doesn’t have brakes. (No regulation but very nice to have)
One more thing i had to think about. When the law says that it also has to stop powering at 25 km/h then all the ebikes are illegal. Because they don’t stop powering at that speed. They only don’t assist you for more than 25 km/h. So if you only can push it to 20 km/h with your muscels then it would support you till 25 km/h. But it lets you stay on that speed and doesn’t shut off directly.
Which brings us back to the point where we need to find out how they managed to make the “Smart Ped” legal.
They stop supporting your peddaling at 25km/h. If you are not able to get to 25km/h even with the support they will not go to 25 by themselves. Why should this be illegal. I don’t get what you are saying here.
I had a quick look and on the actual website they say that the standard Scrooser is only allowed on private property. So it seems that it is not sure that also the “Smart Ped” is really allowed. But then it would be strange that they advertise with that feature.
Anyway, i will try to copy the behavior of it.
Maybe somebody of the forum can help us with the question if it is allowed or not.
Maybe with some bundled research we can find a way to make our hobby legal for Germany and a couple of other countries.
I think the board needs to keep the reduced speed (reduced from the hill) until u accelerate by pushing … else it would count as accelerating on it’s own which would be not allowed.
that wont help you at all. it doesnt matter what private measures you take to limit the power or functionality of the board, b/c they will argue that you could switch those off at any point. Only thing that matters here is its native specs. If your board comes with more power and is built for higher speed than allowed it’s illegal.
As i mentioned earlier. The power is not the problem. The only thing that matters when it comes to watts is that that the motor doesn’t provide more than 250 watts in average. Even if the motor could produce 5000 watts by the specs.
)
You have to change the code in the firmware which isn’t so easy.
Maybe later on a new section can be implemented in the BLDC-TOOL (maybe app settings) to choose and adjust this behavior.
